Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says it’s not a viable solution for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama to pull out of the race.

Moore is accused by several women of sexual misconduct, allegations he denies. Grassley, a Republican, says it appears Moore’s political future will simply be decided at the ballot box next month.

“He could pull out of the race right now and his name’s still going to be on the ballot, so the voters of Alabama are going to decide,” Grassley says. “I would simply say that the allegations are awful.” The special election is scheduled for December 12th to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, who’s now the U.S. Attorney General. Some of the accusations against Moore are coming from women who were teenagers at the time of the alleged incidents.

Grassley says, “It should go without saying since I say these allegations are awful that sexual harassment shouldn’t be tolerated in any form by any individual.” Some Senate Republicans suggest if Moore wins the election next month, they should expel him on moral and ethical grounds. Grassley hasn’t yet reached a conclusion on that prospect. He knows Congress isn’t immune from such behavior.

“We had some evidence that things needed to change in the United States Senate and I’m sorry to say that you’re in this position of being a senator and the institution you serve in might have some of these same problems,” he says. Those problems were addressed more than 20 years ago — and again just last week.

Grassley says, “I got a bill passed in 1995 called the Congressional Accountability Act that put Congress under all the laws we previously exempted ourselves from and one of those was employment laws and that involves sexual harassment.”

The law made sexual harassment prevention classes available to all Congressional staff and to all members of Congress, but the training was voluntary. Grassley says the bill that passed in the Senate last week would make that training mandatory. Iowa’s other U.S. Senator, Republican Joni Ernst of Red Oak, has said of Moore: “If the allegations are true, he needs to step aside.”

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says he sees no reason to delay next week’s Senate confirmation hearing for the northwest Iowan President Donald Trump has appointed to be the U.S.D.A.’s top science advisor.

Sam Clovis worked on Trump’s presidential campaign for 15 months and The Washington Post reports Clovis was the “campaign supervisor” who urged a Trump campaign volunteer to meet with Russian officials. Grassley was asked this morning if Clovis should withdraw as a nominee or delay the confirmation hearing.

Grassley says, “Oh, gosh, I think it’s awful early for me to make a judgment about that from the standpoint that everything I’ve thought about Sam Clovis is his qualification for the job that the president appointed him to.” Grassley says Clovis should cooperate with the FBI as it looks into the case: “It’d be stupid for him not to (cooperate).” Clovis, who ran for state treasurer in 2014 as a Republican, is now the White House liaison to the U.S.D.A. Grassley says the confirmation process should move forward.

“I’ve got great confidence in the special counsel approach and I’ll just let that work its way out,” Grassley says, “maybe not only on Sam Clovis, but on almost everything you might ask me about this.” Grassley told reporters in Washington, D.C. yesterday that President Trump “should let the special counsel do his job.” Grassley indicates there’s no reason to cancel or delay Clovis’ hearing date but he’ll be following developments closely.

“I think that one thing that would make a big difference to me is the extent to which Sam Clovis is committed to cooperating with the special counsel,” Grassley says. Grassley issued a written statement on the special counsel’s investigation on Monday. Grassley said he and the other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will work “to ensure that the Justice Department and FBI are functioning free from inappropriate influence.”

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley today said President Trump “should let the special counsel do his job.” That was Grassley’s first comment to reporters in Washington, D.C. soon after the revelation that the man who served as Trump’s campaign chairman for five months was indicted.

Grassley has released a written statement after a briefing about the indictment of Paul Manafort and one of Manafort’s associates, as well as the guilty plea from a Trump campaign advisor.

Grassley said: “As always, it’s important to let our legal system run its course.” Grassley did not mention the president’s power to pardon those accused of crimes. Grassley said he and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will continue their work “to ensure that the Justice Department and FBI are functioning free from inappropriate influence.”

Grassley added that it is “a dirty little secret” in Washington that the Justice Department has had “lackluster enforcement” of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Grassley said it’s good to see the Justice Department taking that responsibility seriously.

Republican Joni Ernst, Iowa’s other U.S. Senator, issued a “no comment” when reporters asked her for reaction this morning to the Manafort indictment. She has released a written statement this afternoon.

“As I have said, it’s important that we let the Special Counsel and bipartisan congressional investigations continue in earnest,” Ernst said.

The Texas senator who won Iowa’s 2016 presidential caucuses has placed a hold on Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey’s nomination for a federal job.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is blocking a vote in the senate on Northey’s nomination to be an undersecretary in the USDA. Cruz is reportedly irked with the way Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst pressured the EPA Administrator to back off on a plan to reduce the federal biofuels mandate.

Cruz and eight other senators from states that have oil refineries are now asking for a meeting with President Trump. They want to discuss an overhaul of the Renewable Fuels Standard. This group of senators charge the RFS reduces jobs in their states.

Thirty senators — including the two Republican senators from Iowa — were part of the coalition that pressed the Trump Administration to favor ethanol and biodiesel.

Now that Iowa’s abandoned its so-called stop-gap effort to cut health insurance premium costs, both of Iowa’s U.S. senators are among the dozen Republicans supporting a bipartisan bid in the Senate to prop up the nation’s ailing individual insurance market.

“I am willing to look at whatever is presented to find a pathway forward for Iowans. We are running out of time. There is no doubt about it,” Ernst said. “…I do understand the frustrations that exist out there and, believe me, that’s why I am trying to get a bipartisan plan through. Hopefully it will provide some sort relief for those Iowans.”

Ernst made her comments during a weekend appearance on Iowa Public Television. Today, during a conference call with Iowa reporters, Senator Chuck Grassley said the plan would accomplish two major things.

Grassley says, “One would legally put money into the insurance companies to lower premiums for people that are under the poverty level by 250% and give them help with co-pays and high deductibles.” There are tens of thousands of people just in Iowa, Grassley says, who could use this financial boost to pay for their health insurance premiums.

“That is something that Obama did but the courts said he didn’t have the authority to do it,” Grassley says. “The president wants to abide by the law that he took an oath to uphold so he’s not going to continue what Obama did because the courts said it was illegal so he wants Congress to enact this.” The other main goal of the legislation, according to Grassley, is to make it easier for states to get a waiver from the federal government, something Iowa was just forced to table. Grassley, Ernst and 10 other Republicans, along with a dozen Democrats, are backing the bill. Ernst calls it a “short term fix.”

“Which isn’t a perfect plan, but it allows the states greater flexibility. It allows those co-sharing payments to continue,” Ernst said. “We have to look beyond that and that means we are going to have to work on finding a much more long-term, permanent solution.”

Earlier this month, President Trump announced the end of cost-sharing payments to insurance companies. The payments are part of the Affordable Care Act, designed to cover some of the costs of insurance policies for the sickest Americans.

Trump has given mixed signals about the bipartisan bill pending in the Senate that would continue those payments, but Ernst says Trump is likely to sign it if Congress can pass it. And she says the bill will hopefully limit 2018 premium increases for 72,000 Iowans who buy individual health insurance policies.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says President Trump is making the right call in releasing the final classified papers from the investigation of JFK’s assassination.

“Government over-classifies and after 50 years, it’s about time,” Grassley told Radio Iowa.

Thousands of documents about the November, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy have been kept in the National Archives. The papers will be released Thursday unless some agency like the CIA can convince the president to keep the material secret.

Grassley said “for the sake of history” he wants to see all the documents released — and he predicts the move would put a stop to all the “conspiracy theories” about JFK’s assassination.

“I don’t think there’s any arguments anymore, maybe they ended 20 years ago, but for sure the ‘single’ or the ‘double bullet’ argument — this ought to put an end to it,” Grassley said, “and take a little mystery out of government.”

Earlier this month, Grassley introduced a resolution in congress urging President Trump to make a “full release” of the documents. He also tweeted about the topic on October 4th.

Republican Governor Kim Reynolds hosted her first annual “Harvest Festival” fundraiser on today. It featured supportive remarks from Republican allies and a rousing speech from the governor herself.

“As we all know as we travel the state, the liberals are unhinged and they are out for us and we need to double down and do all we can and if you keep fighting, I’ll keep fighting,” Reynolds said. “Let’s keep this united team together because, my gosh, we want to build on the successes that we’ve seen this last legislative session and we want to keep Iowa moving forward. We don’t want them to come in and reverse the good work that we’ve done, so it’s challenge. I’m in if you’re in.”

Reynolds was sworn in as Iowa’s governor in late spring when Terry Branstad resigned as governor to become ambassador to China. She has been laying plans to seek a full, four-year term in 2018. By this past January, the Reynolds campaign reported having already raised $1 million.

Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Iowa GOP, is neutral in the 2018 GOP Primary race featuring Reynolds and Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett, but Kaufmann spoke at Reynolds’ fundraiser. He said Reynolds “is going to hold solid” on the GOP’s recent legislative achievements, including the roll-back of union bargaining rights.

“This party does not take our orders from the union bosses,” said Kaufmann. “We don’t take our orders from obnoxious protesters.”

Iowa’s two U.S. Senators — Republicans Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst — are serving as state co-chairs of the governor’s 2018 campaign. Both mentioned the glass ceiling Reynolds shattered when she became Iowa’s first female governor this spring.

“She’s a bright star for our party and a shining leader for our state,” Grassley said.

Ernst, during her remarks, said: “Iowa is the only state in the nation that has both a female senator and a female governor.”

Republican Congressman Steve King of Kiron also took the stage to offer a personal testimonial for Reynolds, recalling his first meeting with her a decade ago.

“I told myself as she walked out that door: ‘This lady has the eye of the tiger,'” King said. “You watch the expressions on her face. You watch the look in her eye, see what she writes down, see what she follows through and does. She means it.”

Missouri Governor Eric Greitens was the evening’s keynote speaker.

“For our country to move forward, we need to have and we have to have a strong team of Republican governors around the country who are driving conservative reforms,” Greitens said. “…When you look around the country, you can see you’ve got conservative governors who are leading conservative reforms and who are getting things done.”

The governor’s “Harvest Festival” was held in a building on the Iowa State Fairgrounds. It started at 4 p.m. with activities for kids like pumpkin painting. The speechmaking started at 6 p.m., after a barbecue dinner was served.

Bloomberg News is reporting that President Trump has directed the EPA to table proposals that would weaken the Renewable Fuels Standard.

Governor Kim Reynolds spoke by phone with President Trump Wednesday morning and a few hours later she told reporters in Pella that she intends to keep lobbying on the issue.

“It’s not done until it’s done and if you ever think that it is, you’re mistaken,” Reynolds said, “so you don’t stop until you get the final numbers.”

Reynolds spoke at a news conference in Pella. She was joined by leaders in the renewable fuels industry. Grant Kimberley, executive director of the Iowa Biodiesel Board, said it was “discouraging” to see a federal agency “regressing” on Trump’s 2016 campaign pledge to “protect” the Renewable Fuels Standard.

“I urge President Trump and Administrator Pruitt in the EPA not to buckle in the interests of certain oil companies and refiners, but rather stay true on promises made on the campaign trail,” Kimberley said. “…This is about ‘America First’. This is about American jobs, American energy, national security and, certainly, it’s about rural America and the American heartland.”

Iowa Renewable Fuels Association executive director Monte Shaw said the EPA’s initial proposals weren’t “good news” and it was important that President Trump get that message.

“Quite frankly, it looked like the EPA was looking for just about any and every excuse it could find to lower the numbers for both corn ethanol, biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol,” Shaw said. “It kind of felt like the EPA was saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to put up a giant sign across rural America that says: “Closed for business.”‘ And people got upset. People were disappointed and, to a certain extent, people even felt betrayed.”

On another front, Republican Joni Ernst has used her authority as a U.S. Senator to block a confirmation vote on the man Trump has nominated to run the renewable fuels program inside the EPA.

“Able to hold their feet to the fire on a pathway to receive those strong reassurances on these biofuel volumes and the EPA’s commitment to follow both the letter and the spirit of the RFS,” Ernst told Radio Iowa this afternoon.

Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s other Republican Senator, hosted a meeting in his office earlier this week for a group of Midwestern senators who spoke face-to-face with Pruit about these concerns.

Senator Chuck Grassley is joining two of his colleagues in the Iowa Congressional delegation in calling for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to take another look at its rule allowing so-called “bump stocks.”

Those devices were used by the sniper in last week’s mass shooting in Las Vegas. Grassley, a Republican, is shifting the blame, saying bump stocks were deemed legal for sale during President Obama’s time in office.

“I would advocate very much for ATF reconsidering their rule,” Grassley says. “I’m quite surprised that something like that would happen during the Obama administration when they tended to have more of an anti-gun attitude than the present administration does or the majority of Congress holds.”

Congressman David Young and Senator Joni Ernst, both Iowa Republicans, are calling on the Trump Administration to quickly review federal regulations on the devices, which enable semi-automatic weapons to fire much more rapidly. Grassley says he’s against making a knee-jerk reaction and will not introduce legislation right away on bump stocks or anything else relating to restrictions on firearms.

“We’re going to wait until we get all of the evidence that we need from the Nevada shooting, oughta’ wait until the police reports are done,” Grassley says. “Just today some new information came out, as an example, and I think that we will move accordingly.” Grassley says the ATF ruled in 2010 that it would not regulate the bump stock device.

“This tends to make a gun that you’ve got to pull the trigger each time you want to shoot a bullet kind of like an automatic,” Grassley says. “If automatics are outlawed, it seems to me like it was ridiculous for the Obama administration in the first place to put something in that would make a non-automatic gun an automatic gun.”

The shooter in Las Vegas opened fire on the night of October 1st from a 32nd floor hotel room window, spraying bullets into a crowd at a country music festival. A woman from northwest Iowa was among the 58 people killed, and more than 500 were injured in the stampede.

Funeral arrangements were announced today for 33-year-old Carly Kreibaum of Sutherland. Kreibaum was a Sibley native, married and a mother of two. Her funeral is scheduled for 10:30 A.M. on Saturday in Sutherland at the town’s community center. She’ll be buried at Waterman Cemetery in Sutherland.

Senator Chuck Grassley has some advice for President Trump and Tennessee Senator Bob Corker:

“Both ought to cool it,” Grassley advises.

Grassley was quizzed by reporters from NBC and WHO Television yesterday about what the two Republicans said of one another on Sunday. Trump claimed Corker decided against seeking reelection because Trump wouldn’t support him. Corker then spoke with The New York Times and unleashed a torrent of cricitism, suggested Trump “may be setting the U.S. on the path to World War III.”

Grassley told the reporters in Boone yesterday that this very public feud won’t hurt progress on issues like tax reform.

“Definitely not, you see, because the president is in the executive branch and we are in the legislature branch…As long as we do our job, it’s doesn’t matter what the president does, only if he doesn’t sign what we send to him,” Grassley said.”That’s the only place where he’s involved.”

Grassley says he’s got “more important things to do” than try to referee the conflict between Trump and the Tennessee senator. Grassley spoke with NBC and WHO Television after holding a town-hall meeting in Boone.